ILLEGAL vendors operating along Bulawayo city pavements yesterday fought running battles with municipal police, as they resisted being moved to designated sites, which they described as inadequate and not user-friendly.
BY MTHANDAZO NYONI
Bulawayo Entrepreneurs’ Association president, Isaiah Jonga, said engaging in running battles with vendors was not a solution to the problems affecting the nation, as vendors would still return to the streets.
“Rather, the city council should provide bays where vendors can operate from because confiscating their goods won’t solve anything,” he said.
“As an association, we are saying the city authorities should have a plan, whereby they communicate on time that they no longer want us on the streets, rather than to give us a short notice. They should tell us where we should go because taking our goods is not a solution.
“Where do they expect us to go? They should expedite the process of allocating bays.”
Bulawayo mayor Martin Moyo, however, insisted that the vendors had been given adequate time to move to designated sites.
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“They should now move to the places where they were relocated to. It can no longer be random like before,” he said.
“We have been quite generous and accommodating, but there is also a time to take decisive action and it cannot be said we did not give them time. We gave them ample time to register and find places to trade from. We think that time has been adequate. Now everybody should go where they should work from.”
In a notice on Sunday, the local authority warned vendors who had abandoned their designated vending bays that they risked losing them if they remained unoccupied.
Bulawayo streets, like others across the country, are crowded with vendors, who have vowed to stay put at undesignated sites despite several threats by local authorities to remove them and de-congest pavements.
Vendors are violating city by-laws by selling goods such as stationery, meat, clothes, footwear, cellphone gadgets and accessories next to registered businesses.
Mid-year, the issue of illegal vendors gripped the nation, with government imposing several deadlines for all vendors in the country’s central business districts to move back to sites previously identified and new ones to be designated by various local authorities.
Bulawayo has more than 6 000 unoccupied vending bays, which were deserted after traders noticed low customer volumes since the bays were located in secluded areas.
The informal traders accused council authorities of being corrupt, as some of them were said to be leasing out bays at a higher charges.
